Word: novelization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...common response to heart surgery is depression. Wolfe's was delayed but finally hit in January 1997. "I'd never been depressed before," he says, "and I couldn't understand what was happening to me. I looked at the novel and thought it was a failure. I hadn't told enough about Charlie's early life, Conrad was dull and so forth. It seemed useless to go on with it." At this point, Wolfe's inborn personal reticence became an obstacle to his recovery. He once told an interviewer that he would not take his troubles to his best friend...
...last I heard, trains are still running between there and Baltimore. Why not come see me?' I did, and we talked a lot over the phone, and by early April I was back to normal." But the memory of Wolfe's trying time is echoed in the new novel, when Charlie Croker, observing his at-risk Atlanta mansion and grounds bathed in sunlight, shrinks from the sight and thinks, "The depressed man longs for heavy clouds, fog, mist, chilly weather, downpours, hail...
...lull between the completion of his novel, which he was still tinkering with in late summer, and all the publication hubbub to follow, Wolfe finds himself with the unaccustomed luxury of free time on his hands. He has filled some of it by accompanying his son Tommy, an accomplished squash player, to tournaments along the East Coast. "I used to play with him," Wolfe says of the son who is 55 years younger, "until I noticed him setting up shots for me. In aging athletes, the legs go first...
DIED. ERIC AMBLER, 89, pioneering thriller writer; in London. With such books as Epitaph for a Spy and A Coffin for Dimitrios, Ambler elevated the spy novel to the level of literature. "As I saw it, the thriller had nowhere to go but up," he wrote in his 1985 autobiography. Several of his 19 books were made into films, including Journey into Fear starring Orson Welles. Ambler, who also wrote screenplays, was nominated for an Academy Award for The Cruel...
That may be why I wasn't moved more by the PBS series and Beloved, Oprah Winfrey's movie version of Toni Morrison's soul-searing novel. Both productions were excellent, but it's not exactly news that slavery was a horrible crime. I wish we could throw as much energy and emotion into solving the gritty racial problems that we face today as we pour into condemning the sins of the past...